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‘Let us face the future’ conference

70 years on from the 1945 election

27 June 2015

Time 10:00 - 16:15

Duration 6 hours 15 minutes

Cost £15 / £10 unwaged (includes lunch)

2015 marks 70 years since the 1945 election. Labour’s landslide victory in that year and the party’s wide ranging reform programme came to define politics in post war Britain. To mark the event the People’s History Museum has brought together leading historians to discuss the impact of the 1945 election, then and now.

The conference will be held in the first days of the new 2015 parliament, and also coincides with our changing exhibition Election! Britain Votes, running until Sunday 28 June 2015.

Suitable for adults and young people

Programme for the day:

9.30am – 10.00am: Registration

10.00am – 11.00am:‘Prophets’ and the 1945 campaign
Enoch Powell and the 1945 General ElectionPaul Corthorn, Queen’s University BelfastThe Webbs and 1945Michael Ward, Centre for History in Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

11.00am – 12.00pm: Cotton and Co-operation
Preparing for Power in the Cotton DistrictsNeil Redfern, Manchester Metropolitan University / University of ManchesterTowards a Co-operative Commonwealth? The Co-operative Party and the General Election of 1945Angela Whitecross, UCLan / Co-operative College

12.00pm – 12.15pm: Tea and Coffee

12.15pm – 1.00pm: Keynote
The Cultural Memory of 1945Steven Fielding, University of Nottingham

1.00pm – 2.00pm: Lunch (provided)

2.00pm – 3.00pm: Industry and Control
From ‘Ideas of Freedom’ to ‘The Blindfold Elector’: The place of ‘Controls’ in the 1945 General Election CampaignHenry Irving, School of Advanced Study, University of LondonThe Citadel of Capitalist power: Steel, Nationalisation and the Labour Party 1945-1951Christopher Massey, Teesside University

3.00pm – 4.15pm: 1945 and the mediated campaign
‘Babes in arms playing for England, and Attlee in charge of the empire’: The popular press, cartoons and the Attlee Labour governmentCharlotte Riley, University of YorkLabour’s courtship of the media in the 1930s and 1940sLaura Beers, University of BirminghamAvoiding the C word: The 1945 Conservative Poster CampaignChris Burgess, People’s History Museum

The work of Election! artist-in-residence Alex Gardner has been supported through Arts Council England’s Grants for the arts scheme.

Booking Requirements:

Please note event attendees must arrive at least ten minutes before the start time of the event, otherwise their booked space will be given to someone on the reserve list

Please contact the museum as soon as possible if you wish to cancel your reservation so your place can be given to another visitor

Refunds on ticket sales more than seven days in advance of an event are at the discretion of the museum

Refunds on ticket sales less than seven days in an advance of an event are non refundable

For further information please contact the museum on 0161 838 9190 or email events@phm.org.uk